Nathan Thompson
Mrs. W
ENG 100
February 13, 2017
Wagner’s Rhetorical Approach in “Mothers' Messages from Beyond” A mother’s love is said to have power beyond this world. This is seen throughout popular culture as well. For example, in Harry Potter, Harry is protected from Voldemort’s spells at birth by the power of his mother’s love. But can a mother’s love be heard, felt, and embraced in the physical world, even after a mother has passed away? In Stephen Wagner’s article “Mothers' Messages from Beyond,” Wagner writes about the accounts of real people who claim they have felt the presence of their mother’s in some way after their passing. The article includes five personal accounts from other people, along with Wagner’s own personal experience. The supernatural accounts vary anywhere from hearing whispers, seeing apparitions, and even seeing the deceased in one’s dreams. Through the use of emotional stories, pathos, and personal experience, Stephen Wagner tells the stories of mothers reaching out to their children beyond the grave in “Mothers' Messages from Beyond,” to convey a message that even in death, a mother’s loving words can be felt by the living.
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The article that Stephen Wagner wrote is about the paranormal and its connections with the physical, living realm. Wagner’s article was written to draw curiosity about the paranormal from the reader’s views of the deceased, in this case, specifically mothers. Not only is pathos used as an overall generalization for the article to make the reader wonder, it is also used in individual accounts and the title. The title its self “Mothers' Messages from Beyond,” adds a form of suspense when one reads it. Wagner uses that as a form of hook to draw an audience that is curious about the paranormal into reading the article. Pathos is also seen being used in the individual accounts, for example in Stephen’s personal
I, of course, knew my mother as a mother. As I have reached adulthood and become a mother myself, I have also known her as a friend. My mom shared much of herself with me, and I saw sides of my mother as she struggled with her cancer that I had never seen before, especially her strong belief in positive thinking and the importance of quality of life. I was privileged to know so many facets of my mother, but certainly I did not know all. There were parts of her life that I didn’t see, relationships that I didn’t know about. Last night, at the wake, so many stories were told to me about my mom’s strength, courage, humor, kindness, her quietness, her loyalty as a friend. It was so special to hear of these things that my mom said and did, to know some of these other parts of her life. I hope that her friends and family will continue to share these stories with me and with each other so we can continue to know and remember my mom.
In the novel All Over but the Shoutin’ Rick Bragg shows the love and devotion of what every mother should have through his mother. The only woman that Bragg truly cares for and takes time out of his day is for his mother Margaret Marie. Bragg tries to do the best for his mother and tries his best to make her proud of him. Bragg learned early in life that his mother strived to give her children everything possible. For Mrs. Bragg her children are the reason she wakes up everyday and tries to make a better life for them.
First, pathos is used in paragraph 3 and 4 to provide an emotion over the possible crisis that is in our world today. In fact, people are interdependent around the world specifically during 1998 when there was a crisis and the whole world was engaged to that situation (4). This
The emotional appeal can be felt on every sentence of the essay. Form this we can see the suffering faced by the writer. Even the first sentence of the article grabs the reader’s attention. It says,” The blood was like Jell-O. That is what blood gets like, after you die, before they tidy up” (Roberts). The words, blood, suicide, death are themselves filled with emotion which grabs reader’s attention to read the essay. Life is precious. We don’t have a second chance to live. We just live our life once and nobody sacrifices one’s life uselessly. Roberts effectively makes appeals to pathos throughout her essay. Her essay is full of emotionally charged words and phrases like death, suicide, motorcycle accident, abandonment and so on which create a sympathetic image. “Second-guessing is the devil’s game, for there are no answers and infinite questions. But it is an inevitable, inescapable refrain, like a bad song you can’t get out of your mind” (Roberts). This statement clearly supports her appeal to pathos because by the death of a loved one, we have all kinds of difficult emotions and it may feel like the pain and sadness will never go away. Her goal is to make reader feel sympathy for her by writing her personal experience of
Pathos is mostly implemented when Krakauer speaks of the moment when McCandless’s parents visit the site where their son died. Billie McCandless’s quote in this portion of the book resonates as a sad admittance. He says, ” Many people have told me that they admire Chris for what he was trying to do. If he’d lived, I would agree with them. But he didn’t, and there’s no way to bring him back.”(203) The quote serves to articulate the fact that the child of two parents are dead. This makes it difficult for people to think of Chris in such a negative way as before, because he is gone.
It amazes me how a few decades ago can seem like a whole different world. A course of time can impact our lives more than we know it. In the article, A Day Without Feminism by Jennifer Boumgoidnei and Amy Richntds, both of these authors created this piece to inform their audience that although women have gained more rights over time, there was still more progress to be made. These authors gave many examples of how life for women had been, the obstacles they had to overcome, and the laws women had to break for equality.
Advocates for gun sense and gun control, Non-governmental organization(NGO) Moms Demand Action’s public service announcement(PSA) presents the idea that we should control the usage of guns and be sensible with the usage of guns. Specifically, this PSA specifically focuses on the exposure of gun violence to young children in America, and want to prevent this matter. Moms Demand Action persuades a wide-ranging demographic through the use of meticulous rhetorical devices such as characterization, mood, setting, shock value, juxtaposition, and ethos. Within this PSA, Moms Demand Action has effectively used characterization. The focal point of this PSA is two children sitting down in a library, presumably
Writers like Amy Tan, use rhetorical writing to display emotional appeal, tone, style, and even organization. In Tan’s article, Mothers Tongue, she writes about her experiences with her mother's inability to speak English. She provides examples from her childhood of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of her race. Tan addresses cultural racism without showing any anger or specifically pointing out racism. She makes the reader realize that immigrants have to deal with discrimination, and disrespect in their daily lives. She uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to let the reader see what she went through in her early childhood experiences. Her audience reaches out to families who speak “broken English”, and have to deal with being discriminated, and disrespected.
Rhetorical Aspects of Social Isolation The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States of America. It holds work and research from thousands of professionals, and has the ability to be used by professionals and students alike. The American Psychological Association is a type of discourse community, we share basic values and assumptions in this field, and we also have ways of communicating those goals in a specific context (APA format). To get these points across, we use the term rhetoric to target a specific audience with those specific goals. As for rhetoric, rhetoric can be defined as the study of making texts that effectively persuade an audience towards change (Arola).
When creating a comparative rhetorical analysis of two different feminist essays, we must first define the term “feminism”. According to Merriam-Webster.com, feminism is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities”. Feminism is a also a long term social movement, one that’s been in the works since the early 1900’s. However, as any challenger to the norm might receive, the words ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ have gotten a bad reputation. Throughout the years, popular opinion has agreed that if you’re a feminist, you hate men, and don’t shave. It’s a very close-minded belief, and both Lindy West and Roxane Gay agree. Both authors of the essays I am comparing today, West and Gay try and convey their beliefs that feminism isn’t what you think it is. However, they do it in very different ways. Who conveyed their beliefs of feminism better and the superior argument? That is what I am going to display today.
Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade an audience. Writers and speakers often use rhetoric appeals. Aristotelian Rhetoric appeals are used in arguments to support claims and counter opposing arguments. Rhetoric used four different approaches to capture its audience’s attention: pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos bases its appeal on provoking strong emotion from an audience. Ethos builds its appeal based on good moral character of the writer or speaker and relies on good sense and good will to influence its audience. Logos persuades its audience through the use of deductive and inductive reasoning. The kiaros approach requires a combination of creating and recognizing the right time and right place for making the argument in the first place. All of these appeals are important tools, and can be used together or apart to persuade an audience.
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.
Jane the virgin is a show about a woman who had her life planned out the way she wanted until it made a spiraling turn due to unfortunate events. When Jane was a young girl, she had made a promise to her grandma that she would save her virginity until marriage. Unfortunately, during a doctor's check up she was artificially inseminated. After she agreed to keep the baby her relationship with her finance when down the hill. Keeping the baby also caused her school work to be a little harder for her. An examination of Jane the virgin will demonstrate the concepts of process of listening, the benefits of power and being in denial.
Pathos is the appeal to an audience’s emotion. Aside from the other two appeals that I have outlined in this essay, pathos is by far the most recognizable appeal in Lamott’s article. The humorous tone of the article is very easily recognized and frankly, it is hard not to laugh at some of Lamott’s uncalled-for sarcastic remarks (whether it be in your head or out loud). For example, when writing about how every writer she knows never writes an elegant first draft, she continues, “All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her” (1). By making such presumptuous claims about this person, some audiences might find this type of language comical or entertaining, which in turn makes them want to believe Lamott and continue reading. In a way this helps Lamott seem credible to some readers, in which case she has created a successful argument. On the other hand, some readers might find this kind of language unprofessional and inappropriate. Because much of the article deals with language that is full of humor and sarcasm, it would make sense to say that Lamott has directed this article towards an audience who is looking for something more entertaining than a typical statistic-filled essay that one might consider mainstream in this field. Whether it be entertaining or absurd, Lamott most definitely uses the appeal of pathos in her
Becoming a mother has been the best part of my life. I became a mother at a very young age. I had no idea what to expect and was not in the least prepared for the journey that lie ahead. I have truly embraced motherhood and enjoy all the wonderful things it has taught me. While living through motherhood, I have found that it can teach you the most valuable lessons there are to learn. Being a mother has taught me how to have patience. I have also learned that being a mother takes a lot on mental and physical strength. My children have been the best to teach me how to juggle many tasks at once. They have made me strong. Even through some unexpected turns, I have learned how to get through hard times and really learn what it means to never give up. My children are my biggest blessing, and I hope they will learn valuable lessons through me. The skills I have learned from being a mother have helped me in my college journey.